Why We Should Stop Giving Handouts to Oil & Gas Companies – The fossil fuel business is wrecking our planet, & we’re paying them a multibillion dollar bonus to do it. Oil industry as a whole is about 13.6% Profit margin

Submitted by IWB, on April 6th, 2012

Environmental issues aside, its a super profitable business, they don’t need any handouts.

Approximately 10% of their revenue is profit (Source: Exxon Mobil). That’s by no means SUPER profitable. Oil companies do well because of quantity. If you take away handouts, take them away from every company. No company should be getting free money from the government. Free money from the government is just money taken from taxpayers who should have the right to give money to the companies they choose, not who the government chooses.

Also, if you don’t want oil companies to get money stop giving it to them. Cars are a luxury not a necessity. It is possible to live in America without a car. It’s not always fun, but if you believe strongly enough about saving the environment stop driving.

Along with “fivedollaragallongas,” the energy watchword for the next few months is: “subsidies.” Last week, for instance, New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez proposedending some of the billions of dollars in handouts enjoyed by the fossil-fuel industry with a “Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act.” It was, in truth, nothing to write home about—a curiously skimpy bill that only targeted oil companies, and just the five richest of them at that. Left out were coal and natural gas, and you won’t be surprised to learn that even then it didn’t pass.

Still, President Obama is now calling for an end to oil subsidies at every stop on his early presidential-campaign-plus-fundraising blitz—even at those stops where he’s also promising to “drill everywhere.” And later this month Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will introduce a much more comprehensive bill that tackles all fossil fuels and their purveyors (and has no chance whatsoever of passing this Congress).

Whether or not the bill passes, those subsidies are worth focusing on. After all, we’re talkingat least $10 billion in freebies and, depending on what you count, possibly as much as $40 billion annually in freebie cash for an energy industry already making historic profits. If attacking them is a convenient way for the White House to deflect public anger over rising gas prices, it is also a perfect fit for the new worldview the Occupy movement has been teaching Americans. (Not to mention, if you think about it, the Tea Party focus on deficits.) So count on one thing: we’ll be hearing a lot more about them this year.